Delivering Technologies for Banking’s Next Generation

Q: What market need ultimately led to the development of the Mambu platform?

A: Mambu was founded about 12 years ago as a capstone project focused on financial inclusion, mostly in African countries. The company was led by three people who became the original founders of the company and remain its leaders to this day. Their original premise was to develop tools that could enable and support the creation of new financial products and categories of credit to address the needs of underserved populations. Their research revealed that there was a tremendous dearth of options for people in these groups, and that the first step was to build a platform so these new options could be designed and made available. The development of the platform was influenced by using other technologies, particularly in cloud computing, which allowed for more of these needs to be identified and make the platform expand to what it is today. Our vision is to make banking better for a billion people around the world, building a product, business and customer base that is designed to last for decades and to constantly evolve.

Q: How would you describe the value of Mambu’s “composable” nature?

A: Mambu’s composable nature has been a part of the platform since its initial design. It is much more than a marketing buzzword; it describes a practical approach. We aim to be the best SaaS banking platform focused on the servicing of financial products. This means that our platform needs to coexist with all of the best-of-breed components of current and potential clients in a number of different segments. In other words, it needs to facilitate easy integration into a number of development environments. This is what makes it composable. By being composable, Mambu can be integrated into a variety of software ecosystems, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and front-end software. Being composable allows us to take on any of these forms and their corresponding component architecture. By doing this, we introduce a unique agility and flexibility to the market.

Q: What makes the Mexican market unique in terms of fintech development and banking inclusion?

A: We began our expansion into Latin American markets four years ago from our office in Miami. We began to notice a pattern among the emerging economies in this region, not just in Mexico but also in Brazil, Argentina and Chile, wherein significant blocks of their populations did not have contact with traditional financial institutions. This represented enormous growth potential for the credit sector. This is how we began working in Mexico and the rest of Latin America: by offering our platform to credit-based financial service providers. Thanks to our composable architecture and the increasing use and evolution of cloud computing, particularly in the financial sector, our growth in the region has been quite notable. We have even added new capabilities to our platforms as a result of our work. The regulatory framework for these ventures also began to evolve in Mexico, benefiting our approach. This led us to open an independent office in the country in June 2021, since our client portfolio in this market grew to a size that motivated this expansion.

In general, we have developed close relationships with regulated entities because, as a banking SaaS platform, this has proven to be necessary in Latin American markets. The flexibility of our platform allows us to adapt to individual national regulatory environments. In that sense, we have been able to adapt to Mexico’s legal framework quite successfully. Mexico is a great market in terms of infrastructure. This includes matters of operational continuity and security. Our tool is designed to optimize the conditions of any related environment. We provide infrastructural support for financial institutions. We also support our clients in terms of regulatory compliance. They can use our tool to prove that they meet the legal conditions necessary for their operations. Mexico has a booming fintech startup sector but what we offer goes beyond that growth and that segment. Since we use the same programming code for all the companies we work with, we require less time to adapt our services to the needs of clients, which can include fintechs and banks, as well as Sofipos and Sofomes, among other non-banking financial institutions (NBFIs).